Every step of the build,
out in the open.

Added an interactive phone mockup section to the landing page — showing the Feed, Marketplace, Zed Trends, and Opportunities screens so visitors can see what the app will look like before it launches.

Also shipped the referral system: every person who joins the waitlist gets a unique referral link. When your friends sign up through your link, you get credited — and we'll reward the top referrers with early beta access.

Three quick wins: added a full-screen mobile hamburger menu so the site works properly on phones, embedded a live USD to ZMW exchange rate pulled from a public API into the culture section, and added the Zedlike favicon to the browser tab.

Wired up the MySQL database on Hostinger and confirmed the full waitlist flow: form submission → database insert → confirmation email to the user → admin notification email. The PHP mailer is working correctly on the live server.

Admin dashboard is password-protected with bcrypt hashing — no plain text passwords in the codebase.

Deployed the full Zedlike landing page to zedlike.com — complete with the Zambian flag branding, hero section, features grid, culture section, Zed Trends preview, how-it-works steps, and the waitlist form.

The admin dashboard gives us a real-time view of waitlist signups, with charts by city and interest, a search function, and CSV export.

We made the decision to share every step of the Zedlike build openly. Zambia doesn't have many homegrown tech products that show their work — we want to change that.

Building in public keeps us accountable, attracts early believers, and gives the Zambian tech community something to rally around. If we ship something, you'll know about it here first.

We started building Zedlike — a hyper-local social platform built specifically for Zambia. The vision: one platform for Zambian identity, hustle, culture, and opportunity. Profiles, feed, marketplace, jobs, groups, and Zed Trends.

The platform Zambia has been waiting for. Built here. For here.